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The "Argo" win gives it all four of the main guild awards; "Searching for Sugar Man" wins for documentary, "Breaking Bad" for TV drama, "Louie" for comedy, "Girls" for new series

"Argo" and "Zero Dark Thirty" have been named the top film scripts of 2012 by the Writers Guild of America.

The results should be good news for "Argo," the strong Best Picture favorite that appeared locked in a close battle with "Lincoln" and "Silver Linings Playbook" for the Adapted Screenplay Oscar.

And it should provide a smaller boost to "Zero Dark Thirty," because that screenplay's two biggest rivals at the Oscars, "Django Unchained" and "Amour," were ineligible for the WGA's Original Screenplay Award.

Rules that restrict WGA Awards eligibility to films produced under the guild's Minimum Basic Agreement or agreements by a handful of international guilds often disqualify Oscar contenders, or even winners such as "The King's Speech."

In the WGA's Adapted Screenplay category, though, the three dominant scripts were all in the running, giving "Argo" screenwriter Chris Terrio (above, with presenter Jessica Chastain) a potentially significant victory over Tony Kushner for "Lincoln" and David O. Russell for "Silver Linings Playbook."

The win for "Argo" gives it a commanding sweep of the guild awards — Producers Guild, Directors Guild, Writers Guild and Screen Actors Guild's ensemble acting award — and reinforces its position as a prohibitive favorite for the Best Picture Oscar.

Unusually for somebody who's film has won so much, Terrio seemed surprised and flustered during his speech, in which he talked about starting to write "Argo" in 2008, "at a time when I couldn't pay my rent … and I'd defaulted on my student loans. But I had my spec scripts and I had my guild card, and I can't tell you how that propped me up."

In a repeat of a snafu from last year's awards, the win for "Argo" was announced in New York long before the category came up in Los Angeles. While "Lincoln" screenwriter Tony Kushner was accepting an honorary award on the West Coast, he was losing a competitive award on the East Coast.

Throughout the evening, many of the major awards were announced far earlier in New York than they were in Los Angeles — a fact noted by "Zero Dark Thirty" writer Mark Boal (right), who took the stage and admitted, "Thanks to Twitter, I actually knew this was going to happen about five minutes ago."

Boal's win for "ZDT" came over a field that included Oscar nominees "Moonrise Kingdom" and "Flight," along with non-nominees "Looper" and "The Master."

His speech paid tribute to his fellow writers but took special pains to single out director Kathryn Bigelow, who "took my script and made it live and breathe and fly."

"Breaking Bad" was named the year's best drama series — though in the separate episodic drama series category, which honors individual episodes rather than entire series, its four separate nominations likely split the vote and allowed an episode of "Mad Men" to win.

While the episodic comedy award went to an episode of "Modern Family" — or, as host Nathan Fillion called it, "the show they simply won't stop throwing awards at" — the comedy series award was given to a surprise winner, "Louie."

In another surprise, "Portlandia" won in the the comedy/variety category over a gallery of heavyweights that included "The Colbert Report," "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart," "Real Time with Bill Maher" and "Saturday Night Live."

Lena Dunham's "Girls" was named best new series.

"Hatfields and McCoys" and "Game Change" won in the two longform television categories.

The WGA, West ceremony took place at the JW Marriott hotel at L.A. Live and was hosted by "Castle" star Fillion, while the WGA, East ceremony was held at the B.B. King Blues Club in New York City and hosted by Richard Kind.

Kushner was honored with the Paul Selvin Award. The honor goes to a member "whose script best embodies the spirit of the constitutional and civil rights and liberties which are indispensable to the survival of free writers everywhere."

In other honorary awards, playwright-screenwriter Tom Stoppard was given the Screen Laurel Award for lifetime achievement in motion pictures; the writing team of Joshua Brand and John Falsey received the Paddy Chayefsky Television Laurel Award; "Everybody Loves Raymond" creator Phil Rosenthal took the Valentine Davies Award for his humanitarian efforts; past WGA, West president Daniel Petrie, Jr., received the Morgan Cox Award for service to the guild; and Japanese directors Akira Kurosawa, Shinobu Hashimoto, Ryuzo Kikushima and Hideo Oguni were named recipients of the Jean Renoir Award for international writers.

In New York, David Koepp was given the Ian McClellan Hunter Award for Career Achievement, while Bob Schneider received the Richard E. Jawlow Award for service to the guild. The WGA, East also presented a special tribute to the late Nora Ephron.

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Steve Pond, awards editor at TheWrap, is also author of the L.A. Times bestseller The Big Show. He has been covering entertainment for more than two decades, and is the industry's most knowledgeable Academy Awards prognosticator.